There
is a hidden reason, among many other reasons, why American schools no
longer teach the detailed meaning of the Declaration and the Constitution
and the Republic for which they stand.

And
that hidden reason is: schools in this country are no longer American.
They are looked at, by “professionals,” as universal schools.

That
is, these schools service children, many of whom don't speak English or
write English as their first language. And there is no major push to teach
English thoroughly and rigorously to kids who don't speak it or write
it.

When
you look at a school, moreover, as a multi-cultural institution, and you
glorify the notion of “ethnic diversity,” you are basically
saying that integration into the great melting pot is no longer a priority.
So, under that banner, why would you consider a major grounding in the
Constitution important? You wouldn't.

What
you're left with is essentially a social event, not an educational event.

And
within that social event, there are various causes allied as a cluster
of favored issues: greening; the environment; global warming; recycling;
cleaning up pollution; a vague “equality”; helping those in
need.

This
isn't even training people to become cogs in the machine of society; it's
training people to become educational zeros.

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This
is newer than the social engineering concept of John Dewey and others.
It's training people to become, at best, community organizers.

It's
“the group is everything” and “the individual is passe.”

Am I
exaggerating a bit? Yes. On purpose. But I'm pointing to the major trend.
This is where education is heading. Fast.

What
was once the celebration of the individual who achieves at a very high
level of competence, skill, intelligence, and effort has become a reward
for being “a good person,” a “sharer,” a “helper,”
and the outcome is predictable. Kids who are uneducated.

It gets
even worse, because this overarching socialization of kids really, in
the end, emphasizes cliques and elites and a Lord of the Flies syndrome.
You go for socialization as the highest virtue, and that is what you get.

You
begin with the notion of a school being composed of a number of groups
(not individuals), you foster the idea of the group, you teach about groups,
you enlist students in group causes, and that's what you get. Children
at their worst.

Learning
doesn't work unless you place it on the highest pedestal.

Learning
fosters differentiation among individuals based on degrees of achievement.
That differentiation isn't punitive. It's just a reality.

If you
crack the pedestal and pull down the ideal of learning, then achievement
becomes a crime, open to all the barbs and arrows that can be directed
at it by confused, self-entitled, spoiled, resentful, and unattractive
children.

And
the individual goes begging.

The
final blows are delivered by television and the internet. If a kid who
can read compares what he finds on the internet with the sanitized passages
of text in the classroom—Jimmy and Gloria, the multicultural buddies
who pick up discarded tissues on the beach—what do you think he's
going to choose and what is he going to ignore?

Bring
them home and teach them there. Let them read Marx and Lenin and Mao and
get them to dig in and really analyze what these men are saying. Assign
them Maurice Strong and Al Gore and Prince Charles and make them take
apart the elite level of the environmental movement and see what's really
there. Have them read Jefferson and Madison and prove they understand
those texts. Study a plane geometry text and then teach it. Make your
kids derive the theorems from start to finish with complete proofs...

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Opt
out. Decentralize. Bring it all back to the individual and what he can
do. It turns out there is no ceiling. Put him in an environment where
there is no grade curve, no median, no average, no need to saddle him
with the group and all that that implies.

Jon
Rappoport has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years. Nominated
for a Pulitzer Prize early in his career, Jon has published articles on
medical fraud, politics, alternative health, and sports in LA Weekly,
CBS Healthwatch, Spin, Stern, and other magazines and newspapers in the
US and Europe.

He
is the is author of several books, including The Secret Behind Secret
Societies and The Magic Agent (a novel).

Jon
is the author of a new course for home schoolers, LOGIC AND ANALYSIS.

If you crack the
pedestal and pull down the ideal of learning, then achievement becomes
a crime, open to all the barbs and arrows that can be directed at it by
confused, self-entitled, spoiled, resentful, and unattractive children.